of Learning, The Classroom Strategies Series, A Handbook for High Reliability Schools, Awaken the Learner, and Managing the Inner World of Teaching. His practical translations of the most current research and theory into classroom strategies are known internationally and are widely practiced by both teachers and administrators.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Iona College in New York, a master’s degree from Seattle University, and a doctorate from the University of Washington.
To learn more about Robert J. Marzano’s work, visit marzanoresearch.com.
To book Robert J. Marzano for professional development, contact [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
The History of The New Art and Science of Teaching
The history of The New Art and Science of Teaching reaches back to the 1980s when my colleagues and I synthesized the research and theory on the effective teaching of thinking in the book Dimensions of Thinking (Marzano et al., 1988). Relatively soon after, I authored A Different Kind of Classroom (Marzano, 1992), which combines strategies for teaching thinking with more general strategies for classroom management, engagement, and assessment. These works present a comprehensive synthesis of the research on teaching and provide deep-level background to The New Art and Science of Teaching.
The more proximal ancestry of The New Art and Science of Teaching dates back to the turn of the 21st century. In the book Classroom Instruction That Works (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001), my colleagues and I identify nine research-supported instructional strategies. In 2003, with my colleagues I wrote a companion book titled Classroom Management That Works (Marzano et al., 2003) and then another companion book in 2006, Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work (Marzano, 2006).
While I am gratified that each book has been relatively popular and influential, I am not pleased that some have interpreted them as listings of instructional strategies that are “proven” to enhance learning for students. In fact, the nine instructional strategies in Classroom Instruction That Works have been commonly referred to as high-yield instructional strategies—a term I do not endorse. To illustrate, one need only enter the phrase “high-yield strategies” into an Internet search engine and thousands of results will be generated. In fact, in 2009, I wrote an article, “Setting the Record Straight on High-Yield Strategies” (Marzano, 2009b), to counteract the growing incorrect belief that research could ever produce a list of instructional strategies that would guarantee student learning. Specifically, I note that no single instructional strategy can guarantee student learning for a number of reasons. One is that many factors other than the use of instructional strategies affect student learning. Another is that instructional strategies work in concert or sets and should not be thought of as independent interventions. Still another is that educators have to use strategies in specific ways to produce positive results.
Over time, I created an instructional model that ties the strategies, pieces, and points together in an interactive manner; it appears in The Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2007). I chose the phrase art and science purposefully to communicate a message. Specifically, research and theory will never validate the notion that teaching is simply a set of preprogrammed moves manifested as strategies. Rather, instructional strategies are best likened to techniques an artist might develop and refine over years of practice. The artist then uses these techniques to create works that are not only unique and complex but elegantly focused. The more skill the artist exhibits with available techniques, the better his or her creations. Likewise, the more skill the classroom teacher has with the instructional strategies that research and theory have uncovered over the decades, the better the teacher will be able to create lessons that optimize student learning.
The New Art and Science of Teaching, then, represents my perspective on the current state of knowledge about effective teaching. It is a perspective that certainly draws from the past but also shines light on the possible future.
The Research Supporting the Model
The research supporting The New Art and Science of Teaching is extensive since it covers so many years and so many previous works. I discuss the complete research history in detail in “Research Base for The New Art and Science of Teaching” (Marzano, 2017). I briefly summarize it here.
Narrative and Meta-Analytic Studies
The first works constituting the ancestry of The New Art and Science of Teaching provide narrative reviews of the literature (Marzano, 1992; Marzano et al., 1988). These reviews are quite extensive. For example, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) sponsored Dimensions of Thinking (Marzano et al., 1988), but a consortium of twenty-eight organizations—the Association Collaborative for Teaching Thinking—supported it. That consortium included the American Educational Research Association, the International Reading Association (now International Literacy Association), the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Science Teachers Association, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, among others. In effect, The Art and Science of Teaching is based on some of the most widely vetted narrative reviews of the literature to that point. As the name implies, narrative reviews are author centric in that they depend on the author’s ability to organize research and theory into logical categories. The author’s views on the extant literature greatly influence them.
While narrative reviews were the norm at that time, the norm for research syntheses changed with the popularization of meta-analysis in the early 1990s. In How Science Takes Stock, Morton Hunt (1997) describes the nature and function of meta-analysis in nontechnical terms. Briefly, meta-analytic techniques translate findings into effect sizes that report how much increase or decrease in student learning can be associated with a particular intervention. Table I.1 reports the meta-analytic findings from a number of studies on the effect of goal setting as an instructional strategy.
Table I.1: Meta-Analytic Results for Goal Setting
a Two effect sizes are listed because of the manner in which effect sizes were reported. Readers should consult that study for more details.
b As reported in Hattie (2009).
c Both Tubbs (1986) and Locke and Latham (1990) report results from organizational as well as educational settings.
d As reported in Locke and Latham (2002).
e As reported in Hattie and Timperley (2007).
Source: Marzano, 2009a, p. 5.
Table I.1 reports eighteen synthesis studies (each row represents a synthesis study) on the topic of goal setting. The third column lists the number of effect sizes in each study. In their 1993 study, Mark Lipsey and David Wilson report 204 effect sizes; in 2007, Steve Graham and Dolores Perin report
